LPC Blog

The Library Publishing Coalition Blog is used to share news and updates about the LPC and the Library Publishing Forum, to draw attention to items of interest to the community, and to publish informal commentaries by LPC members and friends.

Library Publishing Workflows. Educopia Institute. Library Publishing Coalition. Institute of Museum and Library Sciences.
October 13, 2021

Workflows Release Teaser: Workflow Framework and Recorded Panel

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The Library Publishing Workflows project is gearing up for a whole set of major releases — starting next week with the full workflow documentation for all twelve of our partner libraries. This week, we have a couple of teasers to whet your appetite and get you thinking about publishing workflows! For those of you who like to start with the nitty gritty, we are sharing our workflow framework. And for those of you who want to skip right to the big questions (Why do we publish? How do our workflows reflect our values?), we have a fantastic recorded panel discussion. 

Workflow framework

Our goal in this project is to document a variety of journal publishing workflows. The “right” workflow for one library won’t necessarily fit the needs of another, but all current and prospective library publishers could benefit from seeing how different programs are staffing and carrying out the publishing process. The differences in workflows between our partners occur for many different reasons, including the mission and goals of the library publishing program, staffing and budget, preferences of editors, and historical contingencies of the library and publishing programs.

That said, in the course of our data collection and analysis, the project team has developed a framework for the kinds of work that go into library journal publication. The workflow activities our partners undertake fall roughly into five high-level phases—Submission, Review, Production, Publication, Post-Publication. This framework is both less detailed and more comprehensive than any individual publishing workflow, but it has helped us to understand the broader context and compare different workflows. We hope that this framework will be useful to you both in thinking about your own workflow, and in contextualizing the partner workflows we will release next week. 

Note: We have listed each activity only once in the framework, though one of the ways that workflows differ is the order in which activities occur, so something like the licensing agreement could take place as part of a variety of different phases.

  • Submission: Manuscript submission, license/author agreement
  • Review: Desk review, peer review, developmental editing, prior publication check
  • Production: Copyediting, typesetting, galley review, XML (and other format) conversion, fact checking, checking DOIs in references, processing PDFs, cataloging, create journal issue
  • Publication: Quality review, publication, assign DOIs, OCR PDF, print
  • Post-Publication: Communications and marketing (notifying authors, social media, etc), preservation, indexing

Recorded panel: Our workflows, our values

In this 38 minute-long recorded panel discussion, representatives of six of our partner libraries—Jennifer Beamer (Claremont Colleges Library), Paige Mann (Armacost Library (University of Redlands)), Justin Gonder (California Digital Library), Michelle Wilson (Columbia University Libraries), Sonya Betz (University of Alberta Library), and Vanessa Gabler (The University Library System at the University of Pittsburgh)—grapple with the big questions raised by creating and documenting publishing workflows, including: “What role do library publishers play in ensuring high quality fact-based scholarly publishing,” “What role do they play in social justice and increasing access to means of production,” and “What is the role of library publishing in the Open Access movement and scholarly communications models?”

Coming soon

Keep an eye out next week for the release of the full workflow documentation for each partner library, and then watch this space over the next few months for more workflows-related content and tools! 

 

October 6, 2021

2022 Library Publishing Forum Call For Proposals

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The Library Publishing Forum is an annual conference bringing together representatives from libraries engaged in or considering publishing initiatives to define and address major questions and challenges; to identify and document collaborative opportunities; and to strengthen and promote this community of practice. The Forum is sponsored by the Library Publishing Coalition, but you do not need to be a member of the LPC to attend. 

The Library Publishing Coalition (LPC) is now accepting proposals for the 2022 Library Publishing Forum! After the success of our Virtual Forums in 2020 and 2021, we are thrilled to offer both in-person and online options this year, with a virtual preconference the week of May 16, 2022, followed by the in-person Library Publishing Forum in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania May 25–26, 2022.  We invite proposals for both of these events, and warmly encourage proposals from first-time presenters and representatives of small and emerging publishing programs. Proposals may address any topic of interest to the library publishing community.

The proposal deadline has been extended to November 30, 2021.

Proposal submissions for both the virtual preconference and the in-person Forum are welcome from LPC members and nonmembers, including library employees, university press employees, scholars, students, and other scholarly communication and publishing professionals. We welcome proposals from first-time presenters and representatives of small and emerging publishing programs.

We are committed to expanding the diversity of perspectives we hear from at the Library Publishing Forum. Working towards some of the “Continuing Initiatives” from the LPC Roadmap for Anti-Racist Practice, this year we ask all proposals to explicitly address how they are inclusive of multiple perspectives, address DEI, or incorporate anti-racist and anti-oppressive approaches. We also encourage speakers to provide us with information about themselves that will assist us in identifying proposals that balance geography, identity, and representation, especially from marginalized groups. Presentations about specific communities should include members of that community in their speaker list, and for sessions with multiple speakers, we seek to avoid all-white and all-male panels. Everyone submitting a presentation will also have an opportunity to complete a brief, anonymous demographic survey so we can better understand who is submitting proposals to LPF.

Learn more and submit a proposal

September 20, 2021

Nominations open for the 2021 LPC Award for Exemplary Service

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As participation in library publishing grows, community involvement and leadership has become increasingly important for the profession. To encourage and recognize such service, the Library Publishing Coalition (LPC) gives out an annual Exemplary Service Award. The award recognizes substantial contributions by an LPC community member to advancing the mission, vision, or values of the Library Publishing Coalition. 

Nominations, including self-nominations, may be submitted to the LPC Board by any member of the LPC community. Anyone who is at an LPC member institution can nominate someone. Deadline for nominations is October 8, 2021. Please use the nomination form and include the nominee’s name, affiliation, and email address, as well as a brief statement on why the nominee deserves the award. The winner will be announced in December. 

Criteria for the award

Awardees must:

  • Have contributed substantially to advancing the mission, vision, or values of the Library Publishing Coalition through service.
  • Have served on an LPC committee or task force within the last three years.
  • Be currently employed by an LPC member institution.
  • Not be currently serving on the LPC Board.

Substantial contributions may include:

  • Effective leadership of or exemplary contributions to a committee or task force.
  • Advocacy on behalf of the LPC or the creation or strengthening of LPC relationships with other groups.
  • Significant contributions to the creation of a new program within the LPC or to the expansion, or adoption, of programs and services for members.

The award will consist of a complimentary registration to the 2022 Library Publishing Forum (May 25-26, Pittsburgh, PA), $500 travel support for attending the Library Publishing Forum, and a $250 honorarium. 

Submit a Nomination

Water with the word reflections in all caps with a horizontal line above and below
August 17, 2021

Intersections: Collections, Scholarly Communication, and the “Transformation” of Open Access

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Intersections is an occasional series where community members reflect on what they are seeing in other parts of their professional world and what library publishers can learn from it. 

By Shawn Martin, Head of Scholarly Communication, Copyright, and Publishing, Dartmouth Library

What are transformative agreements changing exactly? Are they promoting open access? Are they shifting the way libraries access and pay for collections? Are they good for small private institutions as well as large public systems? The answers to these questions are incredibly difficult, but as the head of scholarly communication at the Dartmouth Library, they are issues I need to contend with on a regular basis. Fundamentally, I believe that transformative agreements are about the values not only of open access, but also of individual colleges and universities. Values can be implemented in many ways and may vary depending on local conditions. Dartmouth is perhaps not representative of academic libraries broadly speaking. Nonetheless, Dartmouth Library has characteristics of both smaller liberal arts colleges and research universities that, I think, could help a variety of different institutions think about how they work through implementing the values of open access within the economic context of a transformative publishing agreement.

Dartmouth is, comparatively speaking, smaller than its Ivy League peers and is proud of its model for blending the qualities of a research university and a liberal arts college. The scholarly communication program itself is situated within the digital strategies unit, meaning I report to the same Associate Librarian who also oversees the library’s IT infrastructure and digital scholarship initiatives. Because of the library’s small size, however, I have the privilege of working with our collections team and being part of the collection steering committee, which determines how our collection budget is spent. I also meet regularly with the Associate Librarian of the unit overseeing collection strategies. Additionally, I have sat on committees at the Dartmouth Library that evaluated the functionality of databases used for scholarly metrics such as SCOPUS (Elsevier) and Web of Science (Clarivate). I have led discussions within the collection steering committee about the analytics that Unsub provides and how it might need to be supplemented in order to make data-driven decisions managing new budget. In other words, discussion of open access and scholarly communication at Dartmouth has been a hybrid of both a collections and an IT conversation (among others). (more…)

Water with the word reflections in all caps with a horizontal line above and below
August 10, 2021

Transitions: From Sanskrit to Schol Comm

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Transitions is an occasional series where community members reflect on the things they have learned while moving from one institution to another or one role to another. 

By Karen Stoll Farrell, Head, Scholarly Communication Department, Librarian for South and Southeast Asian Studies, Indiana University – Bloomington

In May 2020, as the pandemic was steamrolling forward, I was asked to step in as interim head of the Scholarly Communication Department at Indiana University-Bloomington. I have been at IU since 2014; hired on by virtue of my background and training in things like Sanskrit to be the Librarian for South and Southeast Asian Studies. Later, I added Head of Area Studies Department to my title. While Scholarly Communication is far outside my area of expertise, this wasn’t my first time pinch hitting at IU; I had previously served as interim Head of Scholars’ Commons (think reference, workshops, programming), and I knew I enjoyed the opportunity to learn new things about our organization and about librarianship in general.

In all honesty, I had no idea what I was stepping into. I was completely lost for many months after joining the Scholarly Communication folks. I could blame it on the pandemic, or the new virtual work environment, or perhaps my own abilities, but I suspect much of this readership will know that I could just as easily blame it on the unwieldy boundlessness that is scholarly communication work, as well as the depth of technical expertise needed to fully understand any single piece of that work.

Over the course of that long pandemic year, I dove into as much as I could. Colleagues sent me links to core readings and to more organizations than I thought possible for one sub-field of librarianship, and walked me through many, many issues that I had only the most vague conception of. Eventually, I got a bit better; I know that because my colleagues, whose expertise I relied on so heavily, started to say things like, ‘that’s a really good question,’ or ‘that’s something I also think about.’ I wasn’t caught up, but I was at least gaining a grasp of the true problems and issues of scholarly communication work. (more…)

August 5, 2021

LPC welcomes a new strategic affiliate: Jisc

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The Library Publishing Coalition is delighted to welcome Jisc as a new strategic affiliate!

About Jisc:

Jisc’s vision is for the UK to be the most digitally advanced education and research nation in the world. At its heart is the super-fast national research and education network, Janet, with built-in cyber security protection.  Jisc also provides technology solutions for its members (colleges, universities and research centres) and customers (public sector bodies), helps members save time and money by negotiating sector-wide deals and provides advice and practical assistance on digital technology. Jisc is funded by the UK higher and further education and research funding bodies and member institutions.

Strategic affiliates are peer membership associations who have a focal area in scholarly communications and substantial engagement with libraries, publishers, or both. See our list of strategic affiliates or learn more about the program.

LPC Strategic Affiliates icon

August 3, 2021

Kudos!

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The Kudos program recognizes impactful work done by community members on behalf of the Library Publishing Coalition community.

* * * * * * * * * *

This month we have two Kudos to celebrate!

For their work on awarding the FIRST Publishing Practice Awards: Laureen Boutang (University of Minnesota), Clayton Hayes (Wayne State University), Suzanne Stapleton (University of Florida), Michelle Brailey (University of Alberta), Sam Byrd (Virginia Commonwealth University), Race MoChridhe (Atla)

A big thank you to the work of last year’s Publishing Practice Award Committee for awarding LPC’s first ever publishing practice awards! The idea for this award started years ago, became a task force, and was made possible by Laureen Boutang, Sam Byrd, Clayton Hayes, Suzanne Stapleton, Michelle Brailey, and Race MoChridhe. This committee recruited two fantastic guest judges and selected the inaugural winners, creating a strong foundation for what will become an annual tradition in the Library Publishing Coalition community. Kudos! Thank you!

This kudos was submitted by Emma Molls.

For their work on compiling the new Library Publishing Directory research data set: Janet Swatscheno (University of Illinois at Chicago), Perry Collins (University of Florida), Ellen Dubinsky (University of Arizona), Ian Harmon (West Virginia University), Laura Miller (Florida State University), Liz Bedford (University of Washington), Talea Anderson (Washington State University), Jennifer Beamer (The Claremont Colleges), Jonathan Grunert (SUNY Geneseo), Corinne Guimont (Virginia Tech), Matt Hunter (Florida State University), Liz Scarpelli (University of Cincinnati), Dan Tracy (University of Illinois), Sarah Wipperman (Villanova University)

The Directory Committee and the Research Committee worked together to prepare and release a research data set version of the Library Publishing Directory that includes data from all published Directories and contextual information to support their use in research. The Directory committee pulled together the data set by standardizing data across years, providing a data dictionary, and providing access to the data collection instruments for each Directory. The Research Committee created a readme file for the data set with information about rights, data collection methods, and other contextual information; and created a crosswalk to help researchers track related data points across years. Both groups coordinated on the announcement and promotion of the new resource. This was a large undertaking on top of both committees’ regular work, and involved researching and developing a type of resource that LPC hasn’t worked with before. Kudus to both groups!

This kudos was submitted by Melanie Schlosser.

 

Congratulations to all and our thanks for all your work!

Library Publishing Coalition Quarterly Update
July 21, 2021

LPC Quarterly Update

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Check out our latest Quarterly Update! It includes:

  • Community News
    • 2021-2023 LPC Fellowship Call for Applications
    • Library Publishing Directory news
    • Recipients of the 2021 Publishing Practice Awards
    • New LPC member
    • New Strategic Affiliate
    • Kudos!
  • Library Publishing Forum
    • 2021 Forum Roundup
    • Forum reflections series
  • LPC Research
    • Updates from the Library Publishing Workflows Project
  • Blog Spotlight
    • Transitions & Intersections series

Read the Update

July 21, 2021

Finding Connectedness, Inspiration, and Comfort at the 2021 Library Publishing Forum

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Last year’s Program Committee was tasked with planning the first born-virtual Library Publishing Forum. Recognizing that a week-long online event would just add to a year’s worth of Zoom fatigue and isolation, they made a concerted effort to add as much compassion and humanity to the experience as they possibly could. (And they managed to put together an outstanding program of presenters as well!)

The Committee and Educopia staff worked closely on the logistics to put together a thought-provoking and humane Forum experience on a limited budget; we think we were successful!  So we decided to pull back the curtain on how it was run to support other organizations that are interested in hosting their own online events on a shoestring. Because we had a lot to say, we published a series of daily posts, each with a different theme.

Happy reading!

More Than a Feeling: Using Design to Create a Shared Experience by Hannah Ballard

Blending the Synchronous with the Asynchronous: Strategies for Planning a Successful Conference Program by Justin Gonder

Stick-With-What-You-Have and Add Slowly: Configuring Technology for a Virtual Conference by Nancy Adams

You Always Need More People Than You Think: Staffing a Virtual Conference by Sonya Betz

Pets, Plants and New Partnerships: Creating Space for Social Activities at LPForum21 by Lauren Collister

Sponsorship, Streamlined: How We Shifted In-Person Benefits to a Virtual Space by Caitlin Perry

Virtual Conferencing on a Shoestring: Thoughts on the Budget by Melanie Schlosser

 

If you have any questions, you can email us at contact@librarypublishing.org and we’ll try to answer them.

July 14, 2021

Call for 2022 Entries: Library Publishing Directory and IFLA Library Publishing SIG Global Library Publishing Map

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Library Publishing Coalition logo

The Library Publishing Coalition (LPC) and the International Federation of Library Associations (IFLA) Library Publishing Special Interest Group (LibPub SIG) have partnered to survey the landscape of publishing in libraries across the globe. LPC is seeking submissions for its 9th annual Library Publishing Directory. IFLA’s LibPub SIG has created a first-of-its-kind Map of global library publishing initiatives. Together, we invite you to share information about your library’s publishing activities. 

Libraries that complete the short form survey will appear in the IFLA LibPub Sig’s Global Library Publishing Map.  Libraries that wish to be included in the Library Publishing Directory can go on to fill out the full questionnaire (30-45 minutes to complete). Get started at  https://librarypublishing.org/lpdq-2022. (If your library has had an entry in a previous edition of the Directory, you will receive an email with instructions on how to update it. Email contact@librarypublishing.org with questions.) 

While this year the questions are in English, in the future we hope to be able to translate them into IFLA’s official languages. Responses in English are strongly preferred; we may not be able to include responses in other languages. 

The call for entries will close on Monday, September 13, 2021.
NOTE: The deadline for entries has been extended to Monday, September 20, 2021.

Thank you for joining in this great international collaboration. We look forward to your participation.

The Library Publishing Coalition Directory Committee
Perry Collins, University of Florida, Chair
Ian Harmon, West Virginia University
Karen Stoll Farrell, Indiana University
Nicholas Wojcik, University of Oklahoma

IFLA Special Interest Group on Library Publishing Subcommittee
Grace Liu (Canada)
Ann Okerson (USA)

About the Library Publishing Directory

The Library Publishing Directory is an important tool for libraries wishing to learn about this emerging field, connect with their peers, and align their practices with those of the broader scholarly publishing community. Last year’s edition featured over 150 libraries in almost a dozen nations.

The Directory is published openly on the web in PDF, EPUB, as an online database of current entries, and as a research data set. It includes contact information, descriptions, and other key facts about each library’s publishing services. A print version of the Directory is also produced. The 2022 edition will be published in early 2022. 

About the IFLA Library Publishing SIG Global Library Publishing Map

The goal of the LibPub SIG Global Library Publishing Map is to document more fully the publishing activities to which IFLA’s members contribute, in order to facilitate a global community of interest and support. The IFLA LibPub Sig Global Library Publishing Map accepts submissions from While this first year the focus is on scholarly/academic library publishers, in the future the SIG plans to open submissions to all types of library publishers: academic, public, and others.

Submit an entry